LONG BEACH GROWS™ (www.longbeachgrows.org) is Long Beach's original urban agriculture resource hub for >4 years, since 2010.
LONG BEACH GROWS' mission is to promote green, healthy, environmentally sustainable urban agriculture in Long Beach, California, & other activities that educate, enhance, & grow our communities by ensuring & safeguarding local food security.
Our vision is a city that feeds itself.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

What is food security?

Community Food Security Coalition

Our government* defines food security as "affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food for all people at all times."

For some people, food security means to not have to worry about where their family's next meal is coming from, whatever that meal might be and for whatever reason, including poverty, homelessness, or absence of food even if money is no object.

Some communities are considered food deserts because they lack access to grocery stores. A food desert could be a small town in a remote rural location, or it could be a neighborhood within a big city.

However, food security is not merely freedom from hunger. One's diet might fill the belly but still be nutritionally inferior and actually cause harm.

Even access to a full service grocery store does not ensure food security, if one takes into account whether the food is stripped of its nutritional value by over-processing, whether it contains antibiotics, hormones, drug-resistant bacteria, or other contaminants that don't belong in our food. Food security requires that our food be safe.

Long term food security on a global and even local scale requires that we preserve the natural resources necessary to sustain our food supply.